Tuesday, February 21, 2017

9 YouTube URL Tweaks You Should Know

Even though YouTube has a few major competitor, YouTube still remains the most popular and premier video site on the internet. With an overwhelming amount of videos uploaded every day and some people have even start making a living from the service.Regardless of whether you’re a normal YouTube user or vlogger on YouTube or you are always hunting for the craziest channels and videos you can find, there are all kinds of methods you can use to make YouTube easier for you. Like I said, there are lots of Youtube tweaks you can use right now, and one of those tweaks is the Youtube URL tweak.All you have to do is to just tweak the Youtube URL and everything is going to be easier for you. So let’s take a look at some of these URL tricks to get more out of the service.1. Skip to Any Part of a VideoBy defaults, when you visit a link to a YouTube video, it usually starts from the beginning. But what if you want to show someone just a bit of a video or skip a lengthy intro, how do you go about?Well very simple, you just have to append a time stamp to the URL to start it exactly the time you set it to. And you can do this in a few ways. You can do this manually by adding &t=YmXXs to the end of a video URL, then set the “Y” to start that minutes and XX to the seconds you want it to start the video. Also, you can exclude the minutes, and use only seconds, for instance 90s for a minute and a half.Now assuming the below link is the Youtube video I want to tweak:

youtube.com/watch?v=8ku9WBp05fI

I can tweak it to start at exactly 1min 30sec using this URL:

youtube.com/watch?v=8ku9WBp05fI&t=1m30s

Alternatively, in case you don’t want to use the manual method, you can just pause the video at the exact time you’d like to start, then right-click on the video and select “Copy video URL at current time” in the context menu.2. Looping a Video InfinitelyYouTube is one of the best sources for listening to music, especially video game music even though it is made solely for video uploading. If you want to listen to a song on Youtube over and over again or want to loop any video, you can just tweak the Youtube Url link to play over and over again. And you can do that by adding “repeater” at the end of the “youtube” in the URL. Then this will open the video at YouTubeRepeater.com, which will play the video repeatedly for you.So assuming you have the below link as the Youtube URL to the video you want to loop:

youtube.com/watch?v=8ku9WBp05fI

Then you are going to tweak it to become:

youtuberepeater.com/watch?v=8ku9WBp05fI

You can also tweak the playback settings using the options below the video in case you want it to start or end at different points.3. Bypassing RestrictionsYouTube has age and region restrictions on several certain videos that are labelled as containing mature content. So if you are restricted from watching a Youtube video due to your age or restricted due to the region you are watching from or you aren’t logged in, you can just do a little tweak on the Youtube URL to bypass the age, region and sign-in restriction.Below is an example of YouTube URL link for a restricted video:

youtube.com/watch?v=wvZ6nB3cl1w

To bypass the restrictions, remove the “watch” and replace the “=” with another “/” to create a URL that looks like below:

youtube.com/v/wvZ6nB3cl1w

Then this will play the video in full screen mode and let you watch it without any restriction.4. Skip Time in YoutubeThis somehow similar to the method that lets you select the time you want it to start. So with this, you can also skip a certain amount of seconds at the start of the video. However, you can’t indicate minutes with this one unlike the other method. So to use this, you’ll have to indicate the minutes and seconds you want it to skip in seconds. For instance, if you want it to skip 1m30s, you’ll have to indicate it as 90 (in seconds).So, to skip the first 1m30s of the Youtube video URL link below:

youtube.com/watch?v=1F_bG-uJMns

Simply add start=30 to the end of the URL like:

youtube.com/watch?v=1F_bG-uJMns&start=90

Like I said earlier, it is similar to the first method, but faster and easier to type and you don’t need to remember a certain time stamp.5. Download YouTube VideosSometimes, you can come across a video that you might want to download. In case you’d like to download a YouTube video for your own use, there are many ways you can use to easily do that. You can either use a plugin, software, web app and Youtube URL link.We are going to explain how you can download with the Youtube URL tweak. You can download Youtube videos by adding either pwn or kick before the youtube.com in the URL, then that will take you to services that will let you download those videos in different formats.So, assuming the below link is the Youtube video URL:

youtube.com/watch?v=kFIsoq63lwo

You can tweak the URL by adding “pwn”, “kick” before “youtube.com”:

pwnyoutube.com/watch?v=kFIsoq63lwo

kickyoutube.com/watch?v=kFIsoq63lwo

6. Watch Youtube Videos in the YouTube TV interfaceYouTube TV is basically an interface designed for smart TVs and apps on consoles for instance Apple TV, Roku or Android TV. It stills the same thing as the normal YouTube, but has a less cluttered interface and a few shortcuts that you can easily use with your remotes. It’s worth checking it out because of it neat and cleaner interface.Just add “tv” to the of youtube.com like the link below or just visit this URL from below:

youtube.com/tv

7. Get the RSS of any Youtube channelIn case you like watching a particular Youtube channel videos and you would like to be notified whenever they upload new videos, you can easily tweak the URL to become an RSS link which you can use third party RSS reader to notify you whenever the channel upload new videos.Head over to the Youtube channel URL you want to tweak, then copy the text after "channel/" which usually start from "U". Below is the link to my Youtube channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCltc-sjef-frh0_0bhJBlww

Then i will copy out the text after "channel/" which is UCltc-sjef-frh0_0bhJBlw.

To get the RSS of Youtube channels, you will have something like:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=[channel-id]

Then I will tweak the link by replacing my Youtube id with "[channel-id]. Like below:

8. Download the Thumbnail of Any VideoHave you ever notice that on some occasion when searching for images, google usually curates Youtube videos thumbnail images. It’s actually very common to see pictures from YouTube videos, when searching for images, which are usually named maxresdefault.With this tweak, you can actually view thumbnail of any YouTube videos if it has one.To do this, you’d have to tweak the Youtube URL like:

https://img.youtube.com/vi/[VideoID]/maxresdefault.jpg

Simply replace the [VideoID] with the text after the “v=” at the end of a YouTube video link. The VideoID is the text after “v=”.

So, to view the thumbnail of the below Youtube video:

youtube.com/watch?v=YMbm_SFJugQ

You’d have to tweak the Youtube URL to look like below:

https://img.youtube.com/vi/YMbm_SFJugQ/maxresdefault.jpg

9. Create a GIF from a Youtube VideoWant to create an animated GIF from a Youtube video? With this tweak, you can easily create an animated GIF from any part of a video. We already explain how you can convert Youtube videos to GIF. You can go ahead and check that out.So you can simply create GIF from any Youtube videos by just adding “gif” before the “youtube” text.To create GIF from the Youtube video URL below:

youtube.com/watch?v=8ku9WBp05fI

Simply tweak the URL to this:

gifyoutube.com/watch?v=8ku9WBp05fI

Then from there, you’ll be taken to Gifs.com, where you can add various effects to your GIF and crop the GIF to your liking. After creating it, you can simply share it from there or download it for safekeeping. You can head over to this link for more information.